The effect of water pollution regulation on prices: Evidence from Wisconsin's phosphorus rule and sewer utility bills
Andrew Meyer and
Zach Raff
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2024, vol. 124, issue C
Abstract:
In this paper, we estimate the consumer impacts of Wisconsin's “phosphorus rule”, which created the most stringent statewide water quality and effluent standards for phosphorus in the country. We examine how compliance with the rule affects real billing rates at sewer utilities in Wisconsin, providing the first empirical estimates of water pollution regulation on utility billing rates. We find that compliance with the phosphorous rule increases the average real sewer utility bill in our sample by 7–12%. Our results imply that sewer utilities pass through approximately $65.8 million to residential sewer rate payers annually, which is roughly ⅔ of the total sewer utility compliance costs of the rule. State government subsidies cover an additional ¼ of the sewer utility compliance costs.
Keywords: Environmental compliance cost; Nonpoint source pollution; Pass-through; Sewer utility; Water pollution abatement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 L95 Q52 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069623001328
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:124:y:2024:i:c:s0095069623001328
DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2023.102914
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management is currently edited by M.A. Cole, A. Lange, D.J. Phaneuf, D. Popp, M.J. Roberts, M.D. Smith, C. Timmins, Q. Weninger and A.J. Yates
More articles in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).